


Horrible business.

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Patrician & Clerk [22]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Death, Complicated Relationships, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, L-space, M/M, Multiverse, POV Multiple, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 08:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17680217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Grief does strange things to a man.





	Horrible business.

Clerks are not librarians; librarians are not clerks.

There is a crossover, that much is true, of skillset and demeanour – clerks and librarians each value silence and punctuality; clerks and librarians each have an internal sense for a properly-developed organisational system; clerks and librarians each know, in their heart of hearts, that the world around them is built of words, and that with the right words in the right place, the world will open like an oyster. Equally, they know that with the right words in the wrong place, the world will crumble.

But clerks are not librarians; librarians are not clerks.

They come, nonetheless, under the same umbrella. This umbrella, you understand, is not made of rubberised cloth or of nylon: the umbrella is entirely abstract in nature and is not made of anything, and in the event that it _were_ made of something, it would be made of that very fine paper that always smells lovely when you get close enough for a sniff, and would be printed over with little black letters in a language you’re sure you should be able to read, but you can’t make sense of when you concentrate on it.

This umbrella covers _the Record-Keepers_.

There is a certain magic in Record-Keeping. There is a magic to be found in record-keeping, of course, but Record-Keeping has a certain _dangerous_ magic, as a result of how much power can pass through a Record-Keeper’s hand.

The fact is that nothing exists.

Of course, everything exists, and you and I know that.

But in order for anything to exist (and therefore, for everything to exist) there must be a _record_ of it existing. There are different kinds of records.

Here is one kind of record. There are memories, thoughts, concepts, sayings, words – all of these, directly or abstractly, are records of one thing or other. In _memories_ , the event, the person, the idea, is immortalised in flashes of sensation or feeling, and so again in thoughts; in sayings, in words, even, something is recorded in that the ripples it has made remain ever present in conversations. This is why names are so powerful. A man is not dead, after all, while his name is still spoken.

Here is another kind of record. Books, stories, poems, articles – all of these, directly or abstractly, are records of one thing or other. Sometimes, a book says precisely how something happened, and it gets it completely wrong, or completely write, and those words gather prone in the pages, nest between the leaves of a book like caterpillar eggs waiting warm to hatch. Sometimes, a book will say everything about someone, and lay it all out… A poem will put down on paper, forever, the exactitude of the heart. In books, there are feelings, emotions, but more than that, there are _souls_. This is why stories are so powerful. A story can immortalise anything.

Here is another kind of record. Accounts, receipts, censuses, files – all of these, directly or abstractly, are records of one thing or another. In the file of numbers upon a page, unfolding from the first date to the last, we might see someone’s life from end to end. In one receipt, we might see the measure of an empire; in a census, we might see the same, from a different angle. In a file, we see the fact of the thing hammered down to its purest data, to its brass tacks. This is not why filing cabinets are so powerful, but they are. You’d never want one dropped on your foot.

 Record-Keeping is the miraculous and dangerous art of keeping records _in order_. This does not only mean keeping them sensibly on their shelves or in their cabinets or in their jars or in the heads they belong to (although this is an excessive part of the battle), but in making – in some small way – what sense of them can be made. Part of the way in which any Record-Keeper keeps records in order is in the manipulation and awareness of what we know as _L-Space_ : a library is not always a Library, and the realms of L-space stretch far and wide. Within these realms, the Record-Keepers must move to keep in order what they can.

The problem with the universe at large, throughout L-space’s labyrinthine continuities, of course, is that no matter how much record you make of it, how much of it you write down, commit to memory, immortalise, is that it does not always make sense.

It _cannot_ always make sense.

To make sense of something, ultimately, means that you make it digestible to the mind, and the universe, even broken down to all its resultant records, alas, is too big for that. Even the simplest facts of life, at times, are too big for that.

Take grief, for example.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Vetinari lets his head tip slightly back against the wall, and Vimes remains in his place, staring up at him, the challenge burning in his eyes. _Go on_ , those eyes say. _Go on, just try it, just swipe at me, if you really want to_. Vetinari doesn’t really want to.

His grip relaxes, and the knife hits against the carpet with an almost inaudible _thud_.

Vimes’ hands are on Vetinari’s hips, and he leans in closer, breathes in and smells nothing, because the Patrician smells of _nothing_ , and then he drags Vetinari by the stupid skull cap and drags him into a kiss. Vetinari doesn’t go lax under the touch, because this is Vetinari, but his mouth lets Vimes in, lets Vimes’ tongue touch against his, lets Vimes drag him closer.

The Rubicon has been crossed. They will not go back, after this moment.

Years of building thought, years of quiet, dark words and biting wit and raised eyebrows, have been culminating to this moment, to this _zenith_ of tension, where all will change irrevocably. Vimes’ fingers are quick as they move over the buttons on Vetinari’s stupid, dusty cassock, and he wants to touch him, and Vetinari, despite himself, wants to touch _Vimes_ —

There is the delicate sound of a cleared throat, and Vimes and Vetinari both freeze, looking to the door of the Oblong Office, which is slightly ajar. Rufus Drumknott stands, his chin raised, not wearing his clerk’s robe – he is only wearing his suit, neatly pressed, and his coat is loosely thrown over his arm. He’s wearing glasses, Vetinari notes with surprise, although Vimes doesn’t – Drumknott’s is the sort of man who just looks _right_ with glasses on, and even having never seen him wearing spectacles, your memories of him seem to transplant glasses onto him anyway.

“ _Drumknott_ ,” Vetinari hisses, the indignation palpable.

“It is urgent, my lord,” Drumknott says seriously, apparently nonplussed by the vision of stately impropriety before him. He looks… He looks older than he ought. There are laughter lines around his mouth, a furrow over his brow. He looks— “An emergency at UU, my lord.”

“That’s come to a head already?”

“It would seem so, sir.”

Vetinari’s leg, which had been hooked around one of Vimes’ thighs, comes down. Vimes stands, stunned, chest-to-chest with the Patrician, and apparently under scrutiny.

“Very well,” he says sharply, and Drumknott flits from the room.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Drumknott,” Vetinari says, turning to look at his clerk as Drumknott enters the office, and Drumknott glances up from the files he’s neatly straightening up on Vetinari’s desk. This is a habit of Drumknott’s he is quite used to: Drumknott likes for things to be exactly parallel to one another on the surface of the desk, and he tidies anything in sight. “Are you wearing _lifts_?”

“No, my lord,” Drumknott says.

“You _are_ ,” Vetinari says, feeling his lip twitch, and he steps around his desk, putting his hands on Drumknott’s shoulders to make the other man look at him, and… _Yes_. Yes, he is – Drumknott is perhaps two inches taller, closer to 5’5” as opposed to his usual 5’3”.

Drumknott’s expression is—

“Are you alright?” Vetinari asks, frowning. His clerk is usually so well-composed, but in this moment, he looks as if he is on the verge of _tears_. Over his _height_?

“Quite well, my lord.”

“You needn’t supplement your height, you know,” Vetinari murmurs, and Drumknott’s composure flickers for just a moment, something showing in his eyes. It is _pointless_ , on some level, to even attempt to add to his height, when there is so little he might do, but more than that…

“Thank you, my lord,” Drumknott says.

He seems to hurry slightly as he leaves the room, and Vetinari frowns as he slips away.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Havelock sweeps out with the knife, and he presses it against the soft flesh of the neck before him, up against the jaw. In the low lanternlight that manages to creep into the alleyway from the other end, he can see the glint of the gentleman’s glasses, which are gold-rimmed and rest on a very square, aquiline nose.

“You’ve been _following_ me,” he says.

“Yes,” the man agrees – he has a city accent, a native Ankh-Morporkian. “And no.”

Havelock tilts his head.

“What does _that_ mean?” he asks, fascinated.

The man smiles. “You’re still young. You have a lot to learn before you’re the man I’m looking for.”

“You’re mad,” Havelock says, with some approval. He _likes_ mad people – they provide an insight on the world that is difficult to come to on one’s own, and any new insight on the world is a valuable one. The more angles from which you can see the board, after all, the better you can make your move.

“I’m grieving,” the man replies, with quiet composure. “Madness is part and parcel.”

“Condolences,” Havelock says. The man smiles at him.

“Thank you. Widen your stance.”

“What?” The man’s foot hooks at the back of his ankle, and although Havelock sweeps out with the knife, the man grasps at it first.

“Plant your feet a little wider, if you’re standing this close,” the man says quietly. “There: a lesson to spur you on to the man you will be.”

Havelock stares at him as the man gently releases the blade, and he begins to walk away. Havelock considers, for just a moment, running after him, but he thinks better of it. If he ran after every mad man that said something _mad_ to him in Ankh-Morpork, he’d be running all the time.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“You have our condolences, Mr Drumknott,” Carrot says when the little man comes into sight, and Drumknott turns to look at them. He looks… He looks tired, Carrot thinks. Tired and overwrought, although he moves with his usual composure, his chin high, his shoulders back. He’s a little man – he always has been – and he can walk as silently as a ghost.

He looks upset to have been caught, and he glances with suspicion between Carrot, Angua, Fred Colon, and Nobby. They had been discussing the state of affairs just inside the Oblong Office, _the crime scene_ , but they had stopped politely, when Carrot had caught sight of Drumknott.

“This was inevitable,” he says quietly, in a tight voice. “It was always going to end like this.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t… hurt,” Angua says quietly.

Drumknott smiles. It’s not a very nice smile. It’s rather hard, like it’s been carved quite roughly out of marble.

“You needn’t pretend it hurts _you_ ,” he says icily.

“It hurts me,” Carrot says in a gentle voice, and Drumknott turns to look at him. For a moment, that perfect composure seems to fall down, and he just looks _small_ , and sad. “I always liked the Patrician, Mr Drumknott. It’s not right, him dying like that.”

“No,” Drumknott agrees. “He died in quite the wrong way.”

Carrot frowns, not sure what that means exactly, but Drumknott is already walking down the corridor.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Vetinari raises the bottle of wine, and he pours a little more of it into Margolotta’s glass, seeing the way that she smiles absently. She is wearing a pair of dark sunglasses, her woollen jumper rolled up to the sleeves to bare her perilously pale forearms to the summer warmth, and Vetinari brings his own glass to his lips, taking a small sip.

It’s wonderfully dry, with a spiced lilt that is common to many Genuan wines. His other hand, which rests on the picnic blanket, becomes abruptly chillier as Margolotta’s fingers settle on top of it.

He does not comment on this state of affairs. Nor, indeed, does Margolotta. That is not the sort of relationship that they have, that they have ever had, that they _will_ ever have. Merely that here, sitting on the comfortable summer grass, Margolotta’s hand touches his, and he allows it, and they settle in the comfortable, silent companionship of the afternoon.

“Drumknott, what are you doing?” he asks. “I thought you were inside, with Ms Healstether.”

Drumknott turns to look at him, and for a moment, Vetinari is stunned.

“ _Drumknott_?” he repeats, and the man looks back at him blankly. He wears glasses, like Drumknott; he wears a suit, like Drumknott; he has brown hair, like Drumknott’s, which only in warm sun like this shows its ever so slight, reddish tint. But his face… Drumknott’s face is lined, a few laughter lines showing around his mouth, a permanent furrow at his brow. One of his palms is scarred.

“Forgive me for saying so, Mr Drumknott,” Margolotta says mildly. “But you look as if you have put on twenty years since ve saw you ten minutes ago.”

“L-space, is it?” Vetinari asks. The foreign Drumknott sighs, spreading his hands in a self-effacing manner.

“I’m a little turned around, my lord, I do apologise,” this Drumknott says. “I’ll get it right eventually.”

Vetinari frowns, feeling his brow furrowed. “Trial and error doesn’t sound like you, Drumknott. Not even _another_ you. Not unless the situation was very, very dire.”

“Oh, very dire, my lord,” Drumknott says softly, with a wan smile. “But it always is, where you’re concerned. It’s like that no matter what universe we’re in.” He says it with a certain fondness that’s very _out of character_ for Drumknott, and it gives Vetinari pause, but he doesn’t ask after it. Drumknott gives a delicate inclination of his head, once to Vetinari, and then once to Margolotta. “Good afternoon, my lord, my lady. My apologies for disturbing your picnic.”

They watch after him as he walks back up toward the castle, and Margolotta turns to look at Vetinari.

“He vas strangely… _Intimate_. Did you notice that?”

“Yes,” Vetinari agrees, frowning. “He hails, I suspect, from a very different universe.”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

It is raining in London. The rain comes down in fat, heavy drops that run down the library windows, and Havelock Vetinari, the head librarian, exhales irritably as he reaches up, pinching for a moment the bridge of his nose. The headache is making itself known, little by little, and he doesn’t think there’s any more paracetamol in the cupboards upstairs – when young Perdita (strange, the names children come up with these days) returns from her lunchbreak, he will have to take a moment, he thinks, to walk down the road and pick up a packet from the pharmacy on the corner. Despite his complaints, though, Perdita is a very good librarian, and she is a good second whilst Rufus and Esme are each abroad – Esme is on some holiday with those _ridiculous_ friends of hers to New Orleans, and Rufus is visiting his sister in Suffolk.

With just one other librarian to hand, however, Havelock is worn somewhat thin, and he wants something to ease the headache before it gets much worse.

He will need it, he is aware – young Carrot from the police force is running his _delinquents_ and their computer classes, and _last time_ , Fred Colon had accompanied him, despite not being able to tell a task bar from his backside. The number of _idiotic_ assertions the man had made…

The automatic doors slide open, and Havelock pauses, surprised, as he looks at the man who enters.

“Rufus, I didn’t think you were back until Thursday,” he says, surprised, and he automatically reaches out. His warm hands touch against his husband’s eternally cold cheeks, and he hears Rufus’ breath hitch in his throat, sees his eyes widen slightly. His thumbs drag over Rufus’ prominent cheekbones, and Rufus— “Are you alright?”

Rufus’ eyes are brimming with tears, and Havelock drags him closer, squeezing him against his chest. Rufus _sobs_ , his face buried against the front of Havelock’s black turtleneck, and he cups the back of his head, his lips brushing over the younger man’s temple.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Rufus, is it Wendy? Is she alright?”

“She’s fine,” Rufus gasps out, gripping onto Havelock so tightly that Havelock almost stumbles. “She’s fine, I just… I missed you, Havelock, _gods_ —”

 _Gods?_ Havelock’s mind repeats, turning the word and its strange plurality over in his head.

“It’s alright, dearest,” Havelock murmurs, stroking Rufus’ back. “It’s alright, I’m here. You needn’t… Rufus?”

“I’ll be right back,” Rufus says in a thick voice, stumbling back from Havelock and toward the door, and Havelock stares at him, baffled. He is _scrambling_ away, desperately— “I just… One moment.”

The doors open, and Rufus disappears into the rain.

He returns, as expected, on Thursday, and he makes no mention of his little appearance. Powerless to do anything else, Havelock puts it down to the migraine.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“I don’t know what to make of him,” Rincewind says quietly. He and the Librarian are sitting just outside the doors to the Unseen University Library, and he is holding a copy of yesterday’s Ankh-Morpork Times in his hands. On the front, there is a photograph of Moist von Lipwig, the new Patrician, sombrely addressing the people in one of the squares on the Isle of Gods. There is another article on the front page about Lord Vetinari’s funeral, which was yesterday – they’d waited a little while, to give people time to come into the city.

It all strikes him as a little bit _morbid_ , but he knows that they couldn’t just… _not_ report on it.

“Ook,” the Librarian says, with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Of course it _makes a difference_ ,” Rincewind says. “What’s that supposed to mean, it doesn’t—”

The doors to the library open up, and out steps Rufus Drumknott. Rincewind stares at him, surprised. He had been Lord Vetinari’s personal clerk – for nearly twenty years, according to the Times – and he had expected him to be by the side of the new Patrician, but…

“Are you alright?” Rincewind asks, his heart panging to look at the man, and Drumknott ignores him, breathing heavily, as if he’s just run from somewhere very quickly. His eyes are red-rimmed, and his cheeks are shining wet in the evening light.

“ _Ooook_ ,” the Librarian murmurs softly.

“Oh, I _know_ ,” Drumknott snaps. “I know, I know, you _told me so_. You don’t have to _say_ it!” He crosses his arms tightly over his chest, and he leans heavily back against the wall. He looks _dreadful_.

“He wasn’t— You weren’t in the _L-space_ , were you?” Rincewind asks.

“Ook,” the Librarian says.

“But he isn’t a librarian!”

“I’m a clerk,” Drumknott says. “I come under the same umbrella: I can take the exams. I _did_ take the exams.”

“What were you in L-space for?” Rincewind demands.

Drumknott looks down at the floor. Quietly, and with no small amount of sympathy, the Librarian asks, “Oook?”

“No,” Drumknott says. “I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t want to… I didn’t want to _interfere_ with anything, least of all the nature of causality. I just wanted to— I don’t know. I thought if I could just find… I thought I wouldn’t feel quite so terrible. If I talked to another...”

 _Another clerk?_ Rincewind almost asks, but then he realises, all at once, exactly what the little man must mean… And he feels his stomach give an uncomfortable, sickly lurch at the idea of just how _sad_ that is.

“Oh,” he says quietly. “But… Mr Drumknott, you know, you can find him in the L-space, but it isn’t the same—”

“I know that,” Drumknott says. “I knew that, before I started, I just wanted…” He looks so _young_. He isn’t that young, really – according to the Times, he’s 39 – but he _looks_ young. Powerless. So sad that he can’t stand it.

“Ook,” the Librarian says, with a vague gesture of one gigantic, leathery hand, and Rincewind watches as Drumknott takes a slow step forward. Sitting on top of a table so put him at the same height as Rincewind, the Librarian is at the right height to put his long arms around Drumknott and hug him, and Rincewind watches, feeling horribly out of place, as Drumknott hugs the Librarian back. “Ooook. OooOok.”

“I know,” Drumknott whispers. “But I just thought that if I… If I walked into the right universe, if I just…”

“Ook.”

“No,” Drumknott mutters. “It _doesn’t_ work like that. Last-ditch attempt, I suppose. I think… This was inevitable I knew it would be like this. Stupid of me, to wait until this point in my life to be a hopeful person, I suppose.” The Librarian pats his shoulder, and Drumknott leans back, wiping at his arms.

It’s been a week since the Patrician died, and Drumknott is acting like he only just died. But then—

Grief’s like that, Rincewind supposes.

“Good night, gentlemen,” Drumknott says softly, and he walks down the corridor, out of the door, they watch after him.

“Ook,” the Librarian says quietly.

“What?”

“Ook,” he repeats.

“What do you mean, he’s going to— Well, shouldn’t you stop him!?”

“Ook?” the Librarian asks.

“Because it’s— Because it’s the right thing to do, you can’t just let a man—”

“Ook. OoOoook. Ook.”

Rincewind’s stomach gives a sickly lurch. For a natural survivor like Rincewind, always – quite sensibly in his own mind – terrified of death, the idea of actually _opting in_ is… Insane. But the Librarian knows Drumknott better than he does. If he says there’s nothing else for him to do, he must be right.

Still.

He looks down at the newspaper, wondering if they’ll report on it tomorrow, and he sets the paper down.

“Horrible business,” he mutters.

“Ook,” the Librarian agrees mournfully. “Ook?”

“The Drum?”

“Ook.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I could do with a drink.”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Drumknott sits up in his bed, leaving his body neatly behind him. It’s a curious sensation. He feels abruptly much… _Lighter_.

HIS LORDSHIP SAID THIS WOULD HAPPEN, Death says. A WEEK AFTER HIM.

“Yes,” Drumknott says quietly. On the bedside table is an empty glass. Written neatly on the page beside the glass are a few neat instructions, for when they find him tomorrow. It will all be in order. “Didn’t you believe him?”

IT WAS NOT SET IN STONE UNTIL SOME MINUTES AGO, Death says, and then he shrugs. His robe shifts oddly as he does so. BECAUSE OF THE L-SPACE.

“Oh,” Drumknott says. “That stopped things being definite, did it?”

IN ANOTHER TROUSER LEG OF TIME… Death trails off, meaningfully.

“It felt wrong,” Drumknott says. “Perverted, somehow. There was a Havelock Vetinari who called me _dearest_ , and it felt so wrong I could have spit. I didn’t actually _want_ a different… It was like being homesick for the house you grew up in, but knowing it isn’t there anymore. Even if you walked back to the house, and went inside, it wouldn’t be the same. Do you know what I mean?”

Death stares down at him.

“Oh,” Drumknott says. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Sorry.”

QUITE ALRIGHT.

“I haven’t… broken a rule somehow, have I? You know, with the poison?”

THERE ARE NO RULES. THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY TO DIE, FROM MY END OF THINGS. THERE IS ONLY LIFE, AND THEN DEATH.

“That’s a very healthy way of looking at things,” Drumknott remarks, and then he stands to his feet. He hesitates for a moment, but then he takes Death’s arm, and Death looks down at him. “May I ask you a question?”

IF YOU LIKE.

“Is it true that cats have nine lives?”

YES.

“That must seem like a very banal question,” Drumknott murmurs, as they walk together, and the bedroom in the Palace begins to fade around them. “But I always did wonder.”

I LIKE CATS, Death says.

“Really? Me too.”

HIS LORDSHIP PREFERRED DOGS.

“He did like cats, though. They liked him a lot more, of course.”

IT IS USUALLY THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

“He always was contrary. Will he be there?”

NO... THE JOURNEY IS MADE ALONE.

“And after the journey?”

There is no answer. Sometimes, the fact of the universe belies answers – the universe is too great, after all, and too wide-reaching, to be understood in its entirety. The uncertainty is what the universe is made of, even in death.

There is no answer. There is only… _Hope_.

It’s actually rather comforting.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually have another multiverse thing in the works that is... A lot less sad, lmao, but I will be leaning into the L-space exams at some point earlier in this series' chronology! 
> 
> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). Requests always open.
> 
> I run a [Discworld Comm](https://onthedisc.dreamwidth.org/), and there's also [a Discord right here.](https://discord.gg/b8Z3ThH)


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